


We Were Made for Another World: Extras

by Princex_N



Series: hiraeth [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Autistic Dirk Strider, Blood and Injury, Bugs & Insects, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Neglect, Money, Movie Night, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Roombas, Sign Language, Stimming, Stuffed Toys, Team as Family, rapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-05-07 11:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14670302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: A collection of one-shots and filled prompt requests for the fic"We Were Made for Another World".





	1. Rose => Hear some genuine laughter

The most recent routine added to your household has been the near obsessive consuming of children's movies. Sebastian is the only actual child in the home, but most of these movies are ones that none of you have gotten the opportunity to actually watch before. You feel like this justifies the habit. 

For the most part, they can be a little similar, but they're overall enjoyable. Additionally, every so often, something happens that comes as a complete and utter surprise to all of you. 

Tonight, it's Dirk's reaction to Finding Nemo. 

Dirk's love of movies and his simultaneous ignorance of societal and social concepts means that he's often the most excited to see a movie and also the most frustrated by them. The pause and rewind functions of your DVD player have never been so frequently used as they are when Dirk has to stop or go back during a scene to try and figure out or ask why something just happened. You're not really anticipating that Finding Nemo is going to be any different. 

You feel like you shouldn't actually be surprised to find that it's actually one of the movies that he understands and relates to the most. 

He echoes the name of nearly every fish that he recognizes, and excitedly nudges Roxy whenever he sees something that he's familiar with. He nods almost knowingly when the characters encounter the shark (which is worrying on a variety of levels), and shifts uncomfortably during the jellyfish scene, making you think that he has some experience in that department as well. 

Despite this, you feel like nothing could have prepared you for his reaction to the seagulls. 

The moment they appear on screen, you can see him go tense with anticipation. You have just enough time to worry if he's getting anxious over the predicament that the main characters are in, before the screen erupts into a flurry of action, and Dirk practically bursts from his seat. 

He is practically shrieking in delight. 

You and Dirk don't hang around each other an enormous amount, but you had gotten the feeling that the two of you were getting to know each other quite well by this point. Dirk has never exactly been 'quiet', in the sense that (despite his frequent avoidance of speech) he is always making some form of noise, but in terms of volume he rarely gets loud. You'd gotten the sense that he was simply a naturally quiet person. 

That is certainly not the case now. 

He rocks back in his seat, his hands a flurry of excited flapping as he cackles loudly at the bird's behavior and speech. He manages to get his hands to still long enough to sign [That's  _exactly_ what they're like] before he's once again lost to the hilarity of the situation. By this point, hardly anyone is actually paying attention to the movie as you all stare fondly and blatantly at Dirk's display of overenthusiastic humor. He lets out one of his hyper-realistic sounding seagull cries, and then follows it up with an almost teary sounding "Mine!" that's choked out around strangled laughter. 

You're almost certainly going to have to rewind this movie, in order to actually see what's happening on screen. 

It is undoubtedly worth it. 


	2. Dave => Pet the robot

John's dad sends in the roomba about two months after he takes off, claiming that he trusts Jane to pitch in with chores but not anyone else. Personally, you think that's a little bit on the rude side, but in his defense, you're not entirely sure that this household contains a broom that hasn't been honest to god memorialized in fucking iron. 

So, you get a roomba. Personally, you're not sure what the big deal with the things is all about. It's a clever little device, sure, but you don't think it's all that incredible. 

That is, of course, until about day three. 

Day three is about the time that you notice that the roomba is definitely behaving completely different than it had been during days one and two. 

It only takes you about five minutes of watching it to figure out why. 

The first thing you notice is the little design that's freshly painted on the back of the circular device, which -upon closer inspection- turns out to be a pair of pointed shades. After that comes the realization that, instead of the vaguely listless wandering the bot  _had_ been doing while cleaning earlier, it's moving in very neat and specific rows over the floors. The detail that really seals the deal is the way that it stops when it sees you, and immediately zooms over to investigate your feet. 

You stare down at the miniature vacuum cleaner. You get the very distinct sense that it's staring up at you in return. 

It beeps, almost impatiently. 

You try stepping out of its way, only for it to follow you, bumping incessantly against your sneakers. It lets out a little series of chirps and beeps (another thing that it definitely hadn't been doing before), and refuses to step out of your way. 

This behavior is almost familiar. 

You check to make sure that the room and the halls are completely empty before you reach down, and pet it, the way you would with dogs on the street sometimes. 

You feel a bit like an idiot (because you are, of course, bending down to pat a fucking  _robot_ , right on its little metal shell), but when your hand comes into contact with the little thing, it whistles happily at you, and then races back to the carpet to continue with its vacuuming, apparently satisfied. 

What the absolute fuck. 

Hal finds his way into the living room a few moments after this encounter, and you stop him with an hand on his arm. "Did you put a fucking AI into the roomba?" 

"Yea?" he replies, his tone implying that it should have been fucking obvious. He doesn't stick around to answer any more questions that you could have posed in the face of that answer. 

That's actually pretty typical. 

You go hunt down Dirk to demand answers from  _him_ , but get more or less the same response, which you feel you should have anticipated. 

[We got bored] he explains, [and it wasn't the best at its job. So, we made it better.]

"Is it like, a person? Did you put a person into the roomba?" He seems confused, and you're forced to elaborate. "Like Seb, or Hal. People." 

Dirk takes a moment to think about this, and then shakes his head. [Like a cat] he decides. [Not a person.]

You're not sure if that makes it any better, but it definitely doesn't make it as uncomfortable as it could have been. 

You suppose it's not like it's a huge deal, after all. In the days that follow, the only real differences you're able to pick up on are the way it is now significantly more meticulous in its cleaning, and it will occasionally take breaks to follow people around the house and beg for pets. It also has a tendency to whine when the person it wants to see goes up the stairs where it can't follow. Sometimes, it demands to play hide and seek.  It really is like a weird little dog. (The way it follows Mutie around like it wants to play only serves to emphasize that comparison)

It's technically not the worst thing they could have done with the roomba. (Up until the point where it wakes up the entire house crying because hair had gotten tangled up in its bristles and wheels and it couldn't get free. The video of Dirk that you got, on the other hand, of him crooning comfortingly to the cleaner as he meticulously cleaned it, was definitely worth the unexpected wake up call)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hal names the roomba 'Lil Hal Jr.'


	3. Dirk => Try something new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For tumblr user @ultistes-meister who requested: **"Dirk or Hal's reaction to bugs"**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this probably isn't quite what you were expecting, but i couldn't help myself :3c

The garden was mostly Rose’s idea, but that doesn’t mean that you haven’t been enjoying the process.

You’re not very familiar with the concept of _dirt_ and _growing things_ , and you have a lot of trouble distinguishing between plants that you want to grow, and the plants that you don’t want to grow (which are apparently called ‘weeds’), because they all honestly look exactly the fucking same to you, but you’re making it work. Sort of. There’s a lot of labeling and cordoning off of areas in order to make some of this shit clearer. You still fuck it up sometimes, but you think you’re getting better at it.

You will admit that you are still at a complete loss when it comes to whatever the fuck little animal you’re looking at.

Rose is out with you, wandering among the neat little aisles of sprouts to check on their growth and water them, and you make a noise to try to catch her attention. When she looks up at you, you point at the creature you’d like an explanation for.

“It’s a beetle,” she says, crouching in front of you to get a better look. “You’ve never seen one before?” She continues on before you even get a chance to shake your head, “Ocean. Right. It’s a bug. It’ll eat the plants, so you should kill them if you see them around the leaves.”

It seems weird to acknowledge the fact that there are animals that are this fucking small, but you have seen your fair share of very tiny fish, so maybe it’s not that big of a step down. At any rate, apparently it’s bad for the plants. Kill on sight.

So, you pick the little thing up, pull it up closer to your face to get a better look at its weird little shiny shell and excessive number of wiggling legs, and then you crunch it between your teeth.

It’s an odd taste, but not the worst. Solid crunch, which makes sense because of its little protective shell, which doesn’t seem to do much in terms of protection. You don’t think that there’s much nutritional value in it, just because it’s so small, but that seems pretty on par with a lot of the food that you have at your disposal now. High crunch factor, low nutritional value. Maybe they’re all made of bugs.

You look back up at Rose, and notice that she’s staring at you with her odd not-expression of absolute disgust.

[What?] you sign, raising your eyebrows slightly.

She seems to fumble for words for a moment. This is pretty out of the ordinary for Rose, did she get hurt? “You… ate it.”

You don’t understand. [You said to kill them]

“Yes, and kill doesn’t mean _eat_. Do you eat everything that you kill? What did you do during the game?”

You’re starting to get the sense that she wouldn’t like your answer to that question.

The two of you make eye contact for a brief moment, which you promptly break. Rose pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “I feel like I should have expected this.”

[What’s wrong with eating them?]

“I suppose that in the grand scheme of things there’s nothing _actually_ wrong with it,” she says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement to you. “It’s just not something that people here really _do_. Some bugs are poisonous, so I suppose that you should be careful of _that_.”

You make a mental note to google what poisonous bugs look like. Back in the ocean, you’d been able to tell which fish were alright to eat and which ones weren’t either by watching or being told, but if eating bugs is _apparently_ not something that people do around here, then you’re going to have to figure it out yourself. You don’t really get _why_ eating the bugs would be out of the ordinary. Eating plants that come out of the dirt is perfectly normal, why not the little animals that crawl around in it? But you’re not the expert on human society, so you’ll take Rose’s word for it.

Rose gives you another sustained odd look, and then goes back to watering. You stay where you are and start carefully examining each sprout for more bugs. Some are too small to even bother trying to eat, others are larger than the first ‘beetle’ had been. You cram a couple of them into your pockets when Rose isn’t looking so that you’ll have something to examine later on. They don’t seem like they can do much harm to anything thicker than a leaf, so it’s probably fine.

Later, you try to ask Hal what he thinks about the little things, but instead of reacting like you’d anticipated, he lets out a loud noise of combined shock and disgust and recoils from the bug scuttling around on your desk, “What the _fuck_ is that?”

You pick it up and move it closer to him so that he can get a closer look, and instead of actually examining it, he backs up several more feet. The two of you stand at an impasse for a moment, staring at each other, and then Hal takes off at a sprint and practically ricochets off of the door frame in his haste to get away.

You look at the bug in your hand, its legs wiggling uselessly in a vain attempt to escape your grip, and you think that these little things could be useful for more than just eating after all.


	4. Hal => Consume

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For tumblr user @flotsems, who requested: **m o r e Hal**

There is a lot about having a human body that you have to forcibly remind yourself of, but you count yourself lucky that stimming comes completely naturally. You’ve seen and read what tends to happen to people when they don’t, and since you still have to have a fucking timer remind you when to eat, you doubt that you’d be any better at remembering to stim.

Though, stimming is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than eating tends to be, so maybe things could work out a little easier than you’re thinking.

At any rate, it’s not as bad as it was when you were shades.

Dirk has always been sensitive to sensory input, but the years of sensory deprivation for you were practically fucking torture.

Maybe that’s why you have such a hard time keeping your hands off of shit now.

You get in trouble for it now, and maybe you’re lucky for the fact that you don’t have to venture out into normal human society anymore. You get enough shit for suddenly grabbing the fiber that Jasprose is spinning, or one of Rose’s needles when they glint in the sunlight, _or_ Dove’s scissors; you don’t think you’d have any more luck reeling in the impulse when it comes to random strangers out on the street. You’re pretty sure you should count yourself lucky as it is, that they don’t tend to get _too_ pissed at you for fucking with their shit while they’re working.

But it’s just…. Too good to resist. You haven’t been able to touch things in literally forever, and you want to be able to touch _everything_ now. The carpets and the towels and the weird bumpy texture of the walls. It’s good shit, and you want to touch it, so what’s the point in denying that impulse?

Exactly. There isn’t one.

So when Roxy brings home a carton of Kinetic Sand, you encounter a dilemma pretty fucking quickly.

You’re familiar with Kinetic Sand in the loosest sense, in that you used to watch videos of people playing with it while you were still shades (in a desperate bid to receive _some_ kind of sensory input before you went fucking insane). You’ve never actually touched it for yourself, and the moment you got your hands in it there was approximately One thing that you had on your mind.

You want to put that shit _directly_ into your mouth.

This is a relatively new feeling for you, and you take a moment to dissect it. You’re not a fan of eating things most of the time (and what you _do_ eat has to be Solid and Crunchy to be tolerable), and there hasn’t really been anything that you’ve seen that you’ve immediately had the innate desire to consume. But there is apparently something about the way the sand moves, in your hands and on the table, that your body cannot fucking resist.

And who are you to deny it?

You and Dirk share a split second of almost eye contact, and the moment he realizes what you’re about to do, you shove a chunk of the sand into your mouth before he can get a chance to stop you.

[How is that working out for you?] Dirk signs.

You think about it.

[I forgot taste was a sense] you admit, unwilling to open your mouth to speak at the moment.

[Spit it the fuck out, moron.]

Roxy is staring at you, looking a little stunned. “Is there sand in your mouth right now?”

“No,” you say, voice garbled around the sand in your mouth.

You press your tongue to the roof of your mouth, squishing the sand flat, and then lean forward to let it spill out of your mouth and into your hand, keeping it separate from the rest of the sand still on the table. You run your tongue around your mouth, trying to clean up the dredges of the shit from where it had gotten stuck to your teeth. You make a face. Have to resist the urge to spit on the carpet to get the residual grains out of your mouth, which are pretty significantly unpleasant to feel.

[Was it worth it?]

“Probably not,” you admit, accepting the glass of water that Jasprose has wordlessly pushed your way.

Dirk raises his eyebrows. [Is it going to stop you from doing that again.]

You press your fingers into the remaining pile of dry sand, and watch the way it shifts around the shape of your hand. “Probably not,” you repeat, shrugging unabashedly.

Roxy sighs. “You two are fucking ridiculous.”

Dirk makes an unhappy noise in his throat. [Why are you lumping me in with him?]

“Look me in the face and tell me that you didn’t _also_ think about putting the sand in your mouth.”

Dirk remains suspiciously still.

You _compromise_ and press a handful of the sand against the side of your face, throwing a smug look to the side where Dirk is sitting. He flips you the bird in response.

Shit sensation in your mouth aside, you’re pretty sure that you’re the one who came out on top in this situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lov the cronch


	5. Rose => Hug a stuffed animal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fill for @emilyka-artisticweirdo, who requested **"Rose doing more stuff that she missed out on growing up"**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably recycle this prompt more than once because it's definitely one I can play around with :3c This one sort of has a loose focus on everyone, but there will probably be more Rose-specific ones in the future if that's more what you were looking for

Roxy's tendency towards impulse shopping may one day have negative consequences, but at the moment, you find yourself more endeared by it than anything. 

After all, it's not often you're summoned downstairs by the excited tones of a nineteen year old surrounded by stuffed animals. 

"I never had one before," Roxy explains to you, leaned up against the foot of the couch, the large plush rabbit squeezed mercilessly to her chest. "And they were on sale." 

It doesn't particularly surprise you to find out that Roxy has never had a stuffed animal before. You weren't the one who prepared the house for her to live in, but you doubt that any version of you would have thought to include a selection of children's toys in the supplies. Toys, for you, have never really been linked to positive experiences, and you don't think you've ever actually been in possession of a stuffed animal yourself either. Perhaps you'd had one when you were exceptionally young, but there's nothing that you can remember. 

It doesn't escape your notice that Roxy has bought enough for all of you. 

(Thinking about it a little harder, you wouldn't be surprised if _none_ of you have had this particular experience before)

"Aw, hell yea," Dave says, his monotone lilting into something almost sing-song excited. "Look at this  _banging_ little bitch." The small crow stuffed animal fits almost perfectly into the palms of his hands, and he seems enthralled with that fact. His fingers skate over the top of the little bird's head, the way he's told you he had with some of the birds that had been comfortable enough to enter into his room. " _Rose_ , get your ass over here and come check out this small little dude." 

Dirk is sprawled out on the couch behind Roxy, his arm resting on her shoulder as he reaches over her to rub the fabric of the rabbit's ear between two of his fingers rhythmically. He notices you noticing, and signs [Soft] with his free hand, seeming unwilling to relinquish the texture he's exploring. 

It does seem that you're utterly outnumbered here. 

(It does seem that you're pretty fucking intrigued all on your own)

You carefully step over the small pile that Roxy has amassed in the middle of the living room (and the hand that Roxy has thrust into the pile, in order to pull free a stuffed horse, which she forces Dirk to take. He makes one of his eerily realistic electronic fan noises in response, immediately tangling his fingers in its mane) in order to settle in one of the clear spots on the floor. 

You obligingly give Dave's little crow a thorough once-over, reaching out to feel the fabric of its wing when he insists that you check it out. You sort of wish that you had Dave's ability to casually accept new situations, because you have no idea what you're supposed to do with yourself now. Do you have to ask permission? Is there one she had bought with you in mind? Or can you just grab any one of them? (You do not have a childhood of experiences to draw upon)

You don't think Roxy even notices your hesitation, but she lurches forward unsteadily regardless, her rabbit crushed between her legs and her chest as she digs through the pile for whatever specific plush she's looking for. "I thought maybe a cat," she explains, "but I saw this and it was so much better, like a little creepy boy, but I have _no_ idea what it is." And with that, she passes you a small, black bat. 

Unlike Dave's crow, its wings are open and flop limply as you move it around to get a better look, and its ears are positively massive. It's, quite possibly, one of the cutest toys you've ever laid eyes on, and Dirk's assessment of "Soft" with regards to the plushies was certainly an accurate one. You pinch the bat's wing between your fingers and mimic the circular rubbing motion he had been doing, and understand why he had been doing it in the first place. After a moment's hesitation, you bring the little bat to your chest and squeeze it experimentally, like Roxy had been doing with her rabbit. 

It's nice. Almost ridiculously so. You definitely understand the appeal of these little creatures, now. 

(And you're not tearing up you're  _not_ , this is not affecting you that much, of course not) 

You pull the bat out of the hug, and fix the ear that had inverted when you had hugged it, spreading it out in your lap to appreciate it fully. 

You've read, before, about re-parenting, and you remember thinking that there was no possible way that it was something that you could find beneficial. Looking down at the little stuffed animal in your lap (and around, at Dave, who is trying unsuccessfully to get the crow to perch on his shoulder, and at Roxy and Dirk, who are both mercilessly rubbing their cheeks against their respective plush's fabric), you think you might have been wrong. 

You think that maybe this is not a bad thing at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mom Lalonde was definitely a "purchase my child affection" parent, but I feel like she'd go for plastic toys like dolls / dollhouses and the like, rather than soft ones like good squishy stuffed animals
> 
> Rose names the bat "Kanaya"


	6. Dirk => Slap your brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Combination of @flotsem's request for **m o r e hal** and [this](http://princex-n.tumblr.com/post/172530205103/i-have-more-2-3-11-and-13-for-lil-hal) response for an autistic headcanons prompt meme that i wrote a while ago

"You should start hugging Hal more," Roxy tells you one day, completely unprompted. 

You have to take a moment to disengage from the documentary you had been watching, process what Roxy had said to you, and then try to formulate the facial expression that properly conveys your opinion on this topic. 

"Don't make that face," Roxy immediately admonishes, which means that you succeeded. "You should!" 

[Why the hell would I do that?] you demand, turning to actually look at her, because Rose told you that people like it when you do that and that you should practice. 

"Because he likes them," she tells you, "and because he's your  _brother_ and you should  _be nice to him_."

You can be nice to Hal without fucking  _hugging_ him, you don't even like hugs. You tell Roxy both of these facts. She doesn't seem impressed with your well thought out argument. 

"He is your  _brother_ ," she repeats, instead of coming up with her  _own_ argument. "And you should be  _nice_ to him." 

She doesn't elaborate past that, and she chooses the ever successful method of leaving the room to get out of having to further the conversation, which leaves you with a collection of half-formed thoughts in your head, and a documentary that you're not going to be able to finish the way that you had wanted to. 

Because the fun part is that you cannot get the thought out of your head. 

You know that you don't want to hug Hal, because you yourself do not like hugs. You can tolerate them from Roxy, but only if you're in a particularly good mood, and usually only for very short periods of time. Even the idea of trying to hug Hal sort of makes your skin crawl (this is not a Hal-exclusive reaction).

At the same time, you  _have_ been trying to be nicer to Hal, because you treated him like shit a lot and you don't want to be like that anymore. Is there a line between "being nice to other people" and "being nice to yourself" that you have to be careful not to cross? You're pretty sure that there is, you're just not really sure how to navigate it. 

Usually, you'd ask Hal. For obvious reasons, you cannot do that with this particular situation. 

(You suppose that you  _could_ , but it would be weird, and not a conversation that you particularly want to have) 

There has to be some kind of compromise that can create some kind of middle ground that can satisfy both parties. Compromise, as someone who grew up completely alone, does not necessarily come as a first instinct to you, but this seems like the perfect situation to exercise the concept in. You just have to figure out a way to execute it. 

Somehow this all culminates to form your current situation, where you are sitting at the table next to Hal as the two of you work on a puzzle, with Roxy standing in the doorway silently urging you to give Hal a hug. 

You want to display this version of kindness, you do not want to give Hal a hug. 

You  _compromise_. You shove his shoulder, and nearly send him tumbling out of his odd perch on the chair. 

 _[What the fuck?!]_  Roxy signs at you furiously as Hal tries to regain his footing. You shrug and hope that your panic is properly expressed in the movement. If the shrug didn't manage it, then the "deer-in-headlights" facial expression you're giving Hal as he turns to look at you probably does the job. 

The two of you survey each other for a moment, you with panic and Hal with something far more calculating. 

The moment passes, Hal smirks at you, and then pushes at your shoulder before going back to work on the puzzle. 

Roxy makes some gestures that definitely aren't sign at the situation that you've created, which is probably maybe some way of telling you to fix it. You may be an autistic who grew up in utter isolation, and might not be the  _best_ at parsing the intricacies of social interaction and body language, but you feel pretty confident that Hal isn't actually pissed at you for the consequences of your little misfire of neurons. 

You even ask him about it later, to make sure that he knows that the shove hadn't been the result of you being pissed at him for something. He tells you that he knows, and that he's pretty sure he knows what you were going for. 

You guess it makes sense that if anyone was  _going_ to be able to understand what you had been trying to do, it would be Hal. 

What makes a little less sense is the fact that the two of you  _keep doing it_. The next morning, Hal slaps your shoulder as you walk past him to get to the kitchen, and you later kick his calf as he's settling down to watch a movie with you and a few of the others. 

Roxy doesn't seem amused by it, occasionally dragging Hal into hugs where you can see and staring at you intently, as if the only reason you've developed this new system is because you weren't sure what a hug was supposed to look like in the first place. Despite her obvious confusion, she doesn't ever try to get the two of you to actually stop, not once she noticed the way that Hal grinned after you shoulder checked him in the hallway one afternoon. 

You think it's probably a weird thing, but you don't think it matters. What works, works. And this is just one of those things that  _works_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I initially sat down to finish working on the pair of socks I was knitting, somewhere along the way, this managed to happen instead.


	7. Hal => Consider the Motor Capabilities of the Tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Anonymous, who requested: **Hal wants to try rapping with Dirk in his new human form because Dirk makes it look so easy**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright so it's not _quite_ what you requested, but maybe it's close enough? Or maybe I'll fill the actual literal prompt one day, who knows what'll happen with this fic? Certainly not me!!

You and Dave have been sitting in the living room for most of the morning, listening to Dirk as he paces around and in front of you, words flying from his mouth at a slightly frenetic pace. It's possible that something has stressed him out and he isn't ready to talk about it yet, but it's also equally possible that it's just the Itch of the Day that needed to be scratched, and this was the way to do it. 

Either way, the fact of the matter is that Dirk has been rapping all morning, and there's not much that you can do about it. If he needs help, there's nothing you can do until he actually asks for it. If he doesn't, then there's no need to intervene in the first place. Either way, the only thing really available for you to do is watch the show as it unfolds. 

Dave seems surprised, but in a good way. Dirk hasn't seemed to notice or care about his audience, and spits his rhymes thoughtlessly as he roams around the room in circles. Dave has been trying not to appear obvious in his fascination, and has taken to hurriedly typing messages to Rose to vent the excitement somewhere, while trying to be subtle as if Dirk might stop if he noticed. 

TG: the guy barely talks like how the hell is he this good at this shit   
TG: whats the fucking thing called like rain man   
TG: can you be a savant at rap

Obviously, you can't fault him for not knowing, and it's not a conversation that you want to have at this precise moment (because if Dirk  _isn't_ stressed out, then having that conversation in front of him would  _make_ him stress out. And if he's already stressed out, then it would only serve to make it worse, and you don't antagonize like  _that_ anymore), but you kind of wish that Dave would appreciate the word that Dirk puts into rapping. 

It isn't as if rapping is any easier for Dirk than just plain speaking it. You're pretty sure that it's physically improbable for that to be the case (after all, look at you, and the majority of humanity if you're not mistaken. You can speak just fine, but the minute you try rapping again your tongue is quick to trip over itself and the words falter on their way out as you start to choke on your own saliva. You guess it's good that rapping hadn't been as Big of a deal for you). It's that rapping is important to Dirk, and he practices to make sure it works. 

A part of you almost wants to point it out. The hours that Dirk spends carefully sounding out each syllable of a rap he wants to speak, signing words as he fumbles with the speech as if that could make it easier. The agonizing slow build up from simply speaking the words as individuals to saying them in clusters to getting them out with a rhythm. Days spent listening to the rap (if it's one that someone else has written and performed, a step that's skipped if Dirk has written his own) in an attempt to make the sound second nature easy to replicate. Do anything enough times and it can become habit, and that's exactly how Dirk teaches himself to rap. 

You think that maybe you could build up the basics in the same way. Repeat words over and over until eventually you can build up the speed to say them with practiced ease, but you don't think that you have the patience for that kind of thing anymore. Sure, you can spend hours putting together the same puzzle over and over or watching the same twenty-second clip of Animal Planet's The Most Extreme, but that's different. The kind of repetition that Dirk puts into rap? You don't think you could replicate it. 

You don't think you mind though. Rapping had been fun when you had been Dirk, but it had lost its appeal as you'd formed your own person during your time in the shades, because no matter how hard you try written word just won't have the same flowing rhythm in emphasis that saying things out loud can. It isn't as fun to read or write raps as it is to spit them, and now that you have the ability to do it again, you just don't care too much for it all. It doesn't bother you that this body doesn't have the dexterity to get through verses without tripping, or that you don't have the motivation to force it. 

Listening can be enough. Hearing Dirk's voice in the smooth flow of rhythm that he'll probably never have and doesn't need when he speaks, getting the small sparks of Good Sensory Input that you'd lacked during your years in the shades. It's a nice thing to spend your time on. 

Maybe later you'll tell Dave about the hours and days and weeks of effort that Dirk puts into rapping, and probably then he'll be able to look at it with the same appreciation that you do. Either way, you know that right now, you're both enjoying it, and judging by the loose set of Dirk's shoulders and the odd drag of his steps, Dirk is too. 

That's enough for now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the whack update schedule for this little collection, i can't promise that i'll actually be any better with the updates, but i'll certainly be trying my best!


	8. Hal => Share a stim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of a fill for @dashing-hyphen's request: _Lil Seb dealing with sensory hell was super interesting to me—how do the others help?_

Your walk through the hallway gets interrupted by the process of tripping over something bulky by your feet. 

After barely managing to keep from smashing your face into the wall and crushing whatever the obstacle is beneath your weight by catching yourself on a nearby table (which you do nearly knock over), you try to regain your bearings and see what had nearly succeeded in killing you. 

You're expecting maybe Lil Hal Jr, or a misplaced box of  _something_ placed there during a distracted bout of cleaning out an old room. 

Instead, you find Sebastian contorted into an awkward squat near your feet, staring up at you from behind his shades. 

[What are you doing?]

"What  _am_ I doing?" you ask, glancing down at yourself to check. You feel like shumans shouldn't really have to do a visual check to see what the hell their bodies are getting up to when they're not paying attention, but you aren't exactly most humans. You don't see anything out of the ordinary. 

Sebastian demonstratively turns his hand towards you, his middle and ring finger tapping rhythmically against his palm. You watch him do this for a moment, and then echo the movement for yourself, and find that it does feel familiar - like you've been doing it without thinking. 

You shrug. "I don't know. It just feels nice." 

Seb does it a few more times, tilting his head side to side curiously as he tries it. [Not bad] he decides eventually, clicking his teeth together a few times. [This one is more fun.] He turns his hand back towards you again and flaps it wildly. 

You roll your eyes. "Well, duh," you allow, because obviously. "But the other way isn't bad either" 

Seb shrugs, and then stands, running off to go wherever he had been headed before he'd stopped to try and live out his brief dream of being an overly curious stumbling block. 

You pause long enough to chatter your own teeth, taking the time to explore the small shocks of contact in the bones and the dull click of them hitting each other.  _Then_ you're forced to linger a little longer to try and remember what the hell you had been going to do before you'd been interrupted. 

You dismiss it as something unimportant, and head off to find something else to do. Dirk, however, still waiting at the table for you to come back with the pieces of the puzzle you'd hypothesized might be in the hall closet, has a vastly different opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have i mentioned before that rabbits chatter their teeth as a form of purring? I'm saying it again.


	9. Dave => Panic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one requested this, my brain just decided to do this to me at three in the morning lmao
> 
> warning for canon-typical violence and shit; not anything particularly bad but I figured i'd mention it considering that most of these extras have been pretty fluff-oriented thus far.

You sleep with a knife. 

It's not a want, but a necessity. Less of what others would consider a comfort item and more along the lines of what they'd call a mattress or a pillow. Required. The bare minimum needed for sleep .

Your brother is dead, but you have yet to convince your subconscious of this, even after all these years. 

It's not a problem, until it is. 

Until Dirk walks into your room one morning, looking for something and trying not to wake you up (because the two of you keep almost the same sleep schedule and he knows you need the sleep just as much as he theoretically does). Dirk can be almost silent when he really wants to be.

Not silent enough. 

You wake up, and half awake what you see is this: the sharp point of a pair of shades and the light reflecting off of white-blonde hair.

That's all you've ever needed to spring into action. 

(This is what you don't see: arms too thin to be your brother's, the way his shirt still sags off of his body unnaturally, the odd bobbing motion of his head as he looks for something.) 

You're on your feet without a sound, launching yourself forward without an ounce of hesitation, and Dirk is not your Bro but that doesn't mean that he isn't just as trained as the man had been. He doesn't have a sword (hasn't carried one since he'd woken up without one and had realized where he was, who he was with. He doesn't carry one because of  _you_ ), but his arms come up to shield himself anyway. 

You might be half-asleep, but that has never been a good enough excuse before. 

The blade cuts through his skin easily, tearing through the thin layer of muscle he has and nearly down to the bone. His eyes are wide and panicked, not because you're hurting him but because he's scared you and feels bad about it. You've practically flayed the flesh from his bones and he still manages to find it in himself to feel guilty. 

There is a moment where neither of you moves. You, too bewildered and shocked by the sight of blood that shouldn't make any sense to pull the blade back away from him. Him, too concerned about startling you again to move another muscle, even to just stop the bleeding. 

And then the moment shatters. 

"Holy fucking  _shit_ ," you swear, voice shaking like it never does. You pull the knife out on instinct and then wish you hadn't, as the blood starts coming twice as fast;  _you should have known better_. "Fuck." 

Dirk's eyes are still wide and trained on you, but his expression doesn't waver from its newfound blankness. He doesn't look nervous at all, not of the blood loss or of  _you_ , the one who hurt him in the first place. Any words he might have had are dried up, so he offers you none. Only raises his hands placidly, the best show of comfort he can offer you, before pressing his hand over the wound to try and staunch the bleeding. 

His hands don't shake like yours would have, like yours  _are_. He strips off his shirt with a practiced ease and tightens it around his wounded arm, gives you another significant look that you can't quite read before darting out of your room and towards one of the bathrooms. 

There is a moment where you are still frozen, staring down at the knife in your hand. At the blood staining the blade. 

This is your fault. You did this. 

You drop the knife and hurry to the bathroom. 

In the time it had taken you to get your shit together enough to move, Dirk has already dug out the small first-aid kit (small because the lot of you were stupid enough to think that nothing like this would happen again now that the game was over, but you of all people should have  _known better_. Since when was home ever safe?), and is stitching his arm up with an ease that comes from years of practice. 

He's almost small enough to give you a vague sense of déjà vu. 

Part of you wants to move forward and help. You probably  _should_ help; you're the one who did this to him in the first place. But you're afraid of pushing, of only getting in the way and making things worse than you already have. Dirk seems to have things well in hand, but what if he doesn't, what if you push forward and make it worse?

Dirk doesn't look up at you, and you're almost pathetically grateful for it. He ignores you steadily as he works, only pausing in his stitching to wipe away the blood that's pooling up and obscuring his vision. He snaps the thread with his teeth instead of using the scissors that came in the kit and wraps the wound tightly with the roll of gauze, and the part of you that wants to warn him against wrapping it too tightly falters and dies at the sight of the blood still pumping its way out of his stitches. 

You did this. 

Dirk clicks his tongue to get your attention and you yank your eyes away from his arm and up to meet his gaze. His usual aversion to eye-contact is gone; he meets your panicked and guilty stare with an assurance he doesn't usually have. 

[Not your fault] he signs, slowly enough for you to understand (you're getting better, but you still can't keep up when he starts signing too quickly). He moves his hand with a stiff certainty over his first sign, emphasizing. [Accident.]

Something like a laugh drags its way out of your chest. "We can't just ignore this," you say, the shaking has spread through your entire body; you can barely keep your legs under you. "I- jesus fucking  _christ_. Fucking look what I did to you. Did I cut you down to the fucking  _bone_?" 

Nothing changes in Dirk's face, but after a moment he beckons you closer. You - who has already hurt him once today - don't even think before stepping forward. It's not until you realize how close you are that you want to pull back, suddenly irrationally afraid that a sword will somehow materialize in your hands and cause you to hurt him again. 

Dirk snags the corner edge of your shirt, like he knows what you're thinking. You don't have to test his grip to know that it's barely there, more of a visual than anything else, but you still don't pull away. 

He lifts the bottom of his own shirt up to show you something, twisting slightly to give you a better look at the thick scar that stretches awkwardly over the jutted out edge of his hip bone. 

"Was four," he tells you, both hands out of commission. "Playing." He shrugs, "Accident." 

He lets his shirt drop and turns his hand palm up, letting you see the odd folds of burn scars there. "Accident." 

He jerks his injured arm. "Accident," he reiterates. 

"That's different," you protest. If it's weak, that's only because you're distracted by the mental image of four year old Dirk playing with knives because there was no one around to tell him not to. 

"Not," Dirk replies, so steady it's almost hard to not take him at his word. 

You want to keep arguing. You  _should_ keep arguing, because you fucked up immensely and did something horrible and it shouldn't be this easy for him to just  _forgive_ you. He should be angry at you, unbelievably  _pissed_ , and you would deserve it and anything else he saw fit to throw your way.

But Dirk isn't Bro. 

If you're being bluntly honest, you should probably be grateful for that. 

"Okay," you say slowly, and can almost muster up a smile at Dirk's self-satisfied nod. "Sorry," you add, because you feel like you have to and you're pretty sure that you haven't actually said it yet. 

[Me too] Dirk signs, because of course he does. He doesn't seem like he's relentlessly beating himself up about the whole thing, though, which you suppose is some kind of progress. 

The first chance you get, you throw away the knife. 

You want it to be enough. 

But of course it isn't. 

The few hours of sleep you usually get at night practically evaporate without the safety net of the weapon in your hand. Your hypervigilance is so bad you're a hair's breadth away from a panic attack at all times, and it only gets worse once the lights are off. You're jittery and exhausted all at once and it's like you can physically feel years of progress sliding straight through your fingers. 

It culminates in you getting startled by the sight of Hal rounding a corner ( _Hal_ , of all people). Without a weapon on your person you flinch back against the wall and cower there, until you recognize the bewildered shock on Hal's face and recognize who you're looking at. (He doesn't seem to know what to do any more than you do; you don't think you've ever accidentally mixed him up with your brother before now. He lingers only long enough to awkwardly ask if you're okay before fleeing, and you can't tell if you're grateful or not.) 

That night, Dirk brings you back the knife. 

"No, what the fuck. Did you pull this out of the trash?" You hadn't even cleaned it off past a cursory wipe down, and hadn't put it back where you'd found it. You'd put it directly into the garbage that you had been certain that Roxy had taken out that day. But Dirk is nodding, so apparently the shitty thing hadn't even gotten  _that_ far. " _No_. Christ. Your arm isn't even healed yet, I'm not taking it again." 

Dirk shakes his head this time, drags his fingers over the blade with enough force to tear a ragged noise from your throat, your hands coming up to - what? Take the knife from him? You're not sure what you're planning on doing, but you stop when Dirk just shows you his fingers, skin completely unbroken. 

You take the knife hesitantly to get a better look at it and see that the edge of the knife has been filed down so completely that it's practically flat. Not even the swords in your old fridge had been this shittily blunt. 

"You need to sleep," Dirk says softly. Both of his hands are free to sign if he wanted to, but he'd chosen to speak anyway. On purpose. 

From what Roxy tells you, he saves that for really important words. 

Knowing that, you're not sure if you can argue with him. 

You grit your teeth unhappily. " _Don't_ come in here in the morning," you say, and he nods easily. You realize belatedly that it had sounded vaguely like a threat, but Dirk seems to have understood what you meant so you try not to stress about it. 

You're not expecting it to do much. The whole point of sleeping with the thing is to convince your stupid shitty brain that if your Bro was somehow able to drag himself from the Game's graveyard and into your room, you'd be able to defend yourself. You can't do that with a knife this blunt. You test it against the headboard of your bed and the edge of the windowsill, not sure if your'e trying to convince yourself that you could hurt someone with it or reassure yourself that you couldn't. 

Eventually your desperation for sleep wins out over whatever it is you're trying to prove to yourself. Either it will work or it won't, and you'll be able to move on from there. 

You lay down cautiously, the knife a guiltily familiar weight in your hand, and you're asleep almost before your head hits the fucking pillow. 

You wake up almost eight hours later, more well-rested than you've felt in days, and try and fail not to picture the not-smug smug look Dirk will give you the moment you walk out of your room. 

All in all, you suppose it could have been worse. 


	10. Scrapped: Dirk => Get schooled about cash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an excerpt from the First draft of We Were Made for Another World that I wound up scrapping, but re-reading it again, I think I like it too much to do absolutely nothing with it, lmao

The big question that you're all faced with now is: what's next?

The game is over. You won. No one had really  _known_ what would happened when the game ended, but you don't think anyone expected this. How are you supposed to know what to do when you're in a society that the majority of you had never really been a part of in the first place? 

What you do know is this: Dave's apartment doesn't have the food supply that yours did. Yours was stockpiled up for years of survival, not counting the ocean and air full of wildlife that you had learned to hunt. This place doesn't have anything that you've been able to find. You don't know what Dave and his Bro had been eating, but whatever it was, they hadn't been keeping it in the apartment. 

_You're_ used to going without food; you don't have an issue with the thought of going a couple of days without eating. Dave, on the other hand, you're worried about. He'd left you with his phone after your breakdown in the bathroom, and had gone back to his room. Since you know that you're the reason he's reluctant to come out of there, you're not willing to push him to talk to you - not even about this. 

Not yet at least. 

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostic [TG]:  
TT: Roxy, I have a question.  
TT: Actually, you might not be the best person to answer this question.  
timaeusTestified [TT] added tentacleTherapist [TT] to the chat:   
TT: Rose, I have a question.   
TG: alright rude  
TG: i could answer ur quesiotn, u dont knwo  
TT: What is it?  
TT: Where do normal humans go for food?  
TT: I'm assuming that hunting the birds is frowned upon  
TT: You would be assuming correctly.  
TT: May I ask why food supply is an imminent concern?  
TT: Figured it'd be obvious.   
TT: There's no food.  
TT: Yes, I suppose that would explain it.  
TT: If you could excuse me for a moment.  
TG: u tried gornwgin food on ur roof/  
TT: Quite the typo there, Rox.  
TG: its a practived skill

You don't know what Rose is up to, but you're starting to get the sense that it probably has something to do with Dave. You almost wish that you had kept your metaphorical mouth shut. 

Your suspicions are confirmed when Dave pokes his head into the living room. You give him a loose two-fingered salute. He holds up two packets of instant ramen in response. 

"Sorry, I knew there wasn't a lot around here. Figured Bro had something hiding somewhere," he explains, pulling out one of the pots that you had managed to find and scrub clean while calming yourself down. 

You hesitate as you try to figure out how to reply. It takes you too long to organize long sentences into words, and Dave has already told you that he doesn't know how to sign. Your glasses don't work to text anymore. You grimace. Fuck your upbringing (or, more accurately, lack thereof). You type [He might. Might be better at hiding things than I am] into the textbox of Pesterchum and hold it out for him to read. 

"You're not good at tucking shit away?" Dave asks, his voice has an odd tone to it. Disbelief, you think. 

You shrug again, a little less certain than you had been. [No one to hide anything from.]

He doesn't say anything after that. You think maybe that had been one of those statements that make things awkward for other people. Whoops. 

TT: To answer your earlier question; most people get food from grocery stores.  
TT: As long as you have money, you shouldn't have an issue. Dave says he knows where the local one is.   
TT: ...   
TT: Money?

You wait, but don't get an answer back. Instead, you can hear the computer in Dave's room ping. 

You're getting really good at making those statements that make other people stop talking. 

Dave reemerges from his room after a moment to give you a long calculated look from behind his shades. You're forcibly reminded that yours are probably still where you threw them in the bathroom. 

"So," he says after a long moment. "Money." 

You shrug. You've been doing that a lot lately, although you will admit that it does seem to be one of the easiest and most useful aspect of body language. [Movies don't really tend to get into it], you explain, perhaps a little defensively. You suppose that you're a little embarrassed; you don't like to be left out of the loop. [I know what it is.] you add. 

Dave raises his hands in surrender. "Not saying it's your fault," he says. "Doubt you had many stores where you come from." 

'I was the only human alive,' you want to type, but you don't. You get the feeling that it would just bring back the uncomfortable silence. 

“It’s weird being back here,” Dave admits, coming to sit next to you on the floor of the living room. You hear the microwave beep that it’s done, but neither of you move to get it. “Everything’s where I left it, but I haven’t been here in years.” He sorts out coins and a few bills in front of you as he speaks, organizing them into piles according to size. You realize that you’re about to get schooled about how money works. How exciting.

You wrestle your attention away from the money and back onto the words that Dave has just offered you. You gets the feeling that there is more to this statement than just your immediate understanding of it. A vulnerability for a vulnerability. But you’re not sure how much to believe that. Apparently you have a habit of reading too far into things and creating explanations that aren’t really there. You’ve tried to figure out if this is just your way of overcompensating for your less than socially developed childhood, or if it’s just another example of you being a toxic and manipulative person, and have so far come up with inconclusive results. You wonder if this silence has gone on too long to be socially acceptable.

You wonder if it would be easiest to just ask.

You had tried, and apparently failed, to seem unaffected by your upbringing and hide the fact that you have no idea what you’re doing at any given moment, excluding those rare moments for which you have extensively planned. Judging by the way things developed during the quieter moments in the game, you’d say that you did a piss poor job of it.

If one method fails, you try a different one.

[It sounds disorienting], you agree. You still don’t know if the pause had gone on too long. Movies don’t have to stop to think about what they’re going to say; they have a script. You wish you had one too. [I don’t know what to say in response to that.]

Dave shrugs easily, doesn’t seem offended or irritated with this statement. “You don’t have to say anything. I’ve got a habit of talking to myself.”

“’ve got a habit of not talking enough,” you reply, out loud in your mangled voice. It takes several false starts and faltering pauses, but you get it out there, and it makes Dave snort (in a way that sounds humorous, and not scathing), so you decide it was worth it. 

“Anyway, I bet if I hunted long enough I’d be able to find you a real sick song about the inner workings of the American treasury system, but it might be more hassle than it’s worth to find some kindergarten teacher singing to preschoolers about how their cash works. To be real, we don’t have a lot of cash around here, so you probably won’t have to wind up worrying about it much at all, but it’s all we have unless you somehow managed to learn Bro’s passwords through some kind of osmosis. So, crash course in currency. You ready?”

It takes a while for you to work through all of the words that Dave just said to you. You wonder if it would be unreasonable to ask him to slow down, but you can hold off on that conversation. For now, you simply nod.

He nods back. “Alright, this,” he points to a brown coin. The only one of that color, so it should be easy to remember. “Is a penny. Utterly useless. Worth one cent - nothing costs that little. You’ll get them a lot as change, but if you try to spend them, the cashiers will hate you.” Definitely easy to remember, but apparently all you need to remember is not to use it.

[If it’s worth the least, why isn’t it the smallest?], you ask, pushing the phone into Dave's line of sight.

Dave blinks at you. “Never thought about it that way,” he admits, “but this is America. Home of the most over-complicated bullshit on earth. If there’s a simple way to do things, America is too good to do it that way. You can remember it like this though, if you prefer: it’s brown because it’s worth shit.”

You nod. That is a decent mnemonic.

He indicates the next coin; the second biggest one out of all of them. “This one is a nickel, worth five cents. Slightly more useful than a penny, but only if you’re trying to avoid getting small change back.” The next coin he indicates is the smallest one. “Dime. Ten cents. Basically just a more expensive nickel.” The next coin is the largest. “This one is the quarter, one of the actually useful coins. Twenty-five cents, you’ll still need more than one to actually buy anything, but people don’t mind you using them.”

You’re beginning to get overwhelmed. You wonder if you shouldn’t be taking notes.

“The bills are the easiest, though. They’re what you’re going to want to pay with. A dollar is worth 100 cents. So on and so forth. Groceries for a week probably cost about twenty dollars. I should have enough to get us that much, and we’ll have to see what happens after that.

You’re quiet for a moment, digesting this new information. [The goal is to spend as little money as possible.]

“Yes,” Dave agrees. “Bro has some in the bank, I’m almost positive. He had jobs, not to mention several websites. Chances are his wallet is somewhere with his stuff, all we have to do after we find the card is figure out what the hell his passwords were.”

Your eyebrows furrow, "Card?" you ask. Repeating words from other people is only marginally easier than coming up with them yourself.

“Digital money. Easiest to use. In a store, the cashier rings you up, all you have to do is swipe the card, and all of the money is just taken straight from your bank account and you don’t have to worry about counting anything at all. Out of sight out of mind. That’s why there’s so many shopaholics.”

You decide not to ask what that it. You nod instead. Then realize, [Wallet. I don’t know what that is. I might have thrown it away.]

The two of you look back at the front door, where all of the trash bags are still neatly lined up.

“We can double check later,” Dave says, voice suddenly tight again. “Right now, let’s eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the draft for the original fic several times over, both because of regular editing purposes and because I kept adding in characters and concepts that weren't in the original draft (like the presence of characters like Lil Hal and Jasprose, or Dirk's speech difficulties [which I re-edited this chapter to include; even though it's already not "in-universe" bc of the lack of Hal and Dove, I wanted the characterization to at least be consistent)]. 
> 
> Hope y'all liked it!

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to submit a prompt, you can leave a comment on this fic or visit my [tumblr's request page](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com/requests) for more information and a submission box!!


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